When I finish giving Aurora the play-by-play, she sighs. “Ilovelove.”
“I didn’t say anything about love. I said I have feelings for George.”
“I guess the question is whether you want to spend the rest of your life keeping your feelings in check?”
“I’m not sure I can. But I don’t want to ruin our friendship, either. He means everything to me.”
I can hear her smile. “Imagine if he meant even more.”
• • •
Late in theafternoon, I take a walk along the beach by myself and fill a container with salal berries that grow in the shrubbery by the shore. I need to keep myself busy. I need to create.
My mom is the baker, but I found the precise measurements and the need to follow instructions confining. I fell in love with cooking because it felt like music. Once you knew the basics, you were free to improvise, to experiment, to taste and adjust to your liking. A good recipe is a song—you can sing it a little out of tune and it’s still good. Sometimes, it’s even better.
George once described a productive writing session as a flow, a sort of magical state when his mind goes quiet and the words come almost from nowhere, right through his body, and onto the page. He’s barely aware he’s thinking, that he’s making conscious decisions as to what adjective to use or what material to include. The commas go where they’re supposed to. The sentences grow into paragraphs like a plant until he’s created a blossoming garden. That’s not how it feels when I’m cooking. When I’m in the kitchen, I’m in control. And I desperately need that feeling right now.
Once I’ve foraged enough berries, I drive into Tofino andpop into Naas Foods, a seafood market I’d spotted yesterday. I find fresh halibut, lingcod, Chinook and coho salmon, as well as live crab and candied salmon. The storekeeper tells me about their commitment to sustainability. George would be impressed. I buy a piece of coho, a plank of cedar, and a jar of smoked kelp flakes, harvested right here from the Clayoquot Sound, to experiment with.
As soon as I begin making dinner, George comes to my side, the way he always has, ready to clean up after me. But I shoo him away. I need some space. The meal I prepare is simple. I make a sauce with the berries, the zest of a lemon along with its juice, and a little sugar and pepper, and I roast the salmon on the cedar plank in the oven. George reads in the living room, and every so often, his eyes will find mine and awareness pings between us.
I think of all the meals we’ve shared together, first when I was learning to cook with my mom and all the evenings we spent in the kitchen later as roommates. I think of the linguini we were making the night George told me he was moving out, and the ravioli we made when he returned after the fires. The dinner party I held at Nate’s house. A lifetime of stories told through food.
I plate our meals carefully. The pink fillets of salmon, the dark purple sauce. Yellow pattypan squash and rice pilaf. The colors are remarkable. I picture it then, a spread in a cookbook. Photos of a wild shoreline. An illustration of salal berries. A recipe of my own. I take a photo, and I almost send it to Brie, the way I usually do when I’ve prepared something I’m excited about, but I decide not to. I create a new photo album on my phone called MINE and save it there.
George and I barely speak as we eat—the food is that good, and after everything that happened earlier, I’m not sure what’s left to say. But when his foot accidentally nudges mine under the table, our eyes meet, and I don’t think I’m imagining the heat in his gaze.
We go for a walk on the beach afterward. Fog lies in a thick coverlet over the cove, obscuring the shoreline, so it looks like nothing lies beyond the beach but heaven’s white clouds. We don’t mention the kiss, but it’s like we’re sharing secrets in our glances. Neither of us has forgotten a thing.
Back at the villa, we open the windows so the air smells of fresh rain and spruce. We read in silence until George announces that he’ll be spending the night on the couch. I don’t put up a fight. We say good night and I climb the stairs to the bedroom. Halfway up, I pause and watch George spread a blanket over the sofa. My mind leaps into the future. There are only two more full days before we have to part ways. Loss grips my throat. Even if we never kiss again, I don’t want to go back to the way things were. I don’t want to go months at a time without seeing each other. I don’t want to drift apart.
“George?”
He stops what he’s doing and looks up at me.
“What if it’s not a bad idea?” I ask.
“What if what’s not a bad idea?”
I take a breath. “Us.”
He doesn’t answer, and I can’t tell what’s running through his mind. I’m not going to push it, though. If I’m confused, he’s allowed to be, too.
“Just a thought,” I say. And then I take myself to bed.
Chapter Thirty-four
We Were Twenty
I knew exactly who the man was as soon as I saw him outside our building. I would have recognized him anywhere. Beau Saint James looked just like George. He was tall and slim. Wore glasses. Had the same dark curls and restless energy.
I was coming back from the grocery store, my arms weighed down with the ingredients for my mom’s crisp. George had been emailing with his dad and invited him over for coffee the next time he was passing through Toronto. I could tell he was more nervous and excited about the visit than he’d admit. I planned to busy myself by making George’s favorite dessert while they talked. If things went badly, I’d be close enough to intervene. There were a hundred ways Beau could break George’s heart, and I was bracing for all of them.
So when I saw Beau pacing in front of the entrance, looking at the doors as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to go inside, I marched right up to him, already furious. He grinned from one side ofhis mouth and asked what he could do for me. He had no idea who I was, that I knew more about his son than he ever had or would.
“Are you coming in, or are you going to bail?” I asked him.
His blue eyes narrowed. He smelled of stale cigarettes and aftershave.
